Ido Portal has spent the past few decades honing a physical credo and method that's now practiced by thousands of people all over the world - from office workers, to former CrossFitters, to NBA players, to the ever-controversial UFC titan Conor McGregor. Known as The Ido Portal Method, or simply "movement," his approach purports to take the "most potent" parts from a range of physical disciplines by shedding the dogmas that often accompany them. As he puts it: "I want the contents, not the container."

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We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.

Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

In any particular sport, with well-defined rules, mastery is achieved through specialization, taking a few skills and perfecting them.

So naturally, most experts and teachers of movement are specialists of skill sets like gymnastics, hand balancing, Olympic lifting, capoeira, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, judo and other martial arts.

So it's rare to come across a generalist, someone who takes a holistic approach to movement.

He is a guru of movement, a teacher with a large and quickly growing following.

As he says, movement is big, Bigger than any specific discipline.

We're all human first movers second and only then specialists I

Actually just finished reading a biography of Albert Einstein by Walter Isaacson and the 2 of you have something in common, a desire to arrive at a unified theory.

In his case it was a unified theory of physics, forces of nature.

In your case it's a unified theory of movement.

Can you tell me the story of your journey to becoming a generalist?

First I'll just say that I'm no guru, you know, it's something that people use, but I have a really hard time with the word master or guru, and I didn't arrive at the gospel truth, or I'm not sitting on any mountains, and I'm on my way.

So people who join me as students are basically following, you know, in the same journey.

Maybe in certain circumstances I'm a bit further ahead or sometimes I'm a bit behind.

But it's definitely walk along and not walk behind kind of thing.

I started as a mover first and then I became a specialist and then I went back to movement basically.

It all started in a young age and some Chinese martial arts developed into some physical sports and games in school, primary school and high school.

And then I met Capoeira and I was completely amazed basically by this art form and pursued that for a good 15 years.

In the middle somewhere, military service and other physical pursuit.

And throughout changing and developing and moving between disciplines and exploring, I just kind of got the same realization again and again that there is some thread through all these disciplines, something that is attracting me back.

And basically it was movement, I realized.

And the next thing was, okay, I want to learn movement, I want to get better as a mover in a general way.

I seeked out movement teachers and went around the world and looked around and read a lot of books and there were some people who mentioned the word movement.

And I went to them and, you know, offered myself as a student and they kept on teaching me disciplines and other isolated approach and other speciality.

So eventually I decided, okay, I'm going to become that person.

I'm going to become the movement teacher.

And the next realization after years and years of trying was it's impossible.

And with that I stayed basically because I realized if that's impossible, it's a good goal to have in life.

Something that will keep on moving myself and my students and anybody involved forward.

I'm teaching and learning, moving around and trying to gain some more knowledge about this impossible task.

Yes, so you're still yourself or forever a student.

I prefer to be a student any day of the week than a teacher.

But being a teacher is part of human culture.

Whether you want it or not, somebody asks you for direction in the street, you become the teacher.

You have a child, he looks at you, you're a teacher.

Practicing, teaching, and practicing to the student, the discipleship, both of them are extremely important for your development as a mover.

As humans, we evolved to become humans as generalists.

We are the most generalist of all animals.

We're able to imitate the ape and imitate the tiger and we can hold our breath underwater and we can do everything just a tiny bit.

We can't really run very fast, we can't really fight very well, We can't climb as good as other animals, but we can do the most complex and generalized tasks out of all animals.

The price is your fulfillment as a human being.

It's deep, it's philosophical, but that's who we are.

Do you think there is some beauty in fulfillment, some value in specialization, in becoming the best at a very specific movement at a particular sport, giving your body to, you know, dedicating it to that sport?

That's an interesting thing because as a human race we benefited tremendously from the work of specialists, but those specialists suffered.

It's like, without specialists, we would never be here.

We would never be Skyping right now on these computers and wearing these t-shirts and all kinds of stuff.

But those specialists, those human beings, suffered the result of their highly specialized nature.

There is a move towards being generalist again in the last few years, maybe the last decade there is a bit more talk about that, but definitely we are also still pursuing highly specialized fields.

If I make a joke in my workshop, and I say, nowadays, you go to a if you break your you know, you break your hand, you go to a hand specialist, orthopedic surgeon, in 5 or 10 years, you'll go to a left hand specialist.

And the most evident problem is also our leaders who are ex-specialists.

But now, they're required to be generalists, leaders of a lot of stuff.

We keep on having the same problems again and again because they are ex-specialists, whether it's a lawyer or a military person or an economist, these are not specialties that allow you the full grasp of running a country.

Yeah, I think you put it beautifully that it might, specialization might lead to innovation, but you lose the humanity.

What do you find is the most underdeveloped range of motion in athletes.

Like what movement is most restricted in high level athletes in your experience?

Is there 1 that stands out, shoulders, any particular other joints?

Well, it all depends on their speciality, of course, and habits.

The shoulder, the glenohumeral joint, is the most hypermobile joint in the body.

Even when it's restricted, it still offers tremendous range of motion compared to other areas.

But when it's restricted, even if it's just a little bit, it can cause huge problems because we are dependent on that range of motion and mobility around the glenomaral joint.

And the simple reason is because with the hands, humans manipulate.

That's what we're meant to do with our hands and we need that complexity around the scapula.

It's been a few years since I've said it first, that the scapula craves complexity.

But this complexity around the scapula and range of motion is so important across the board.

I've read of your concept of isolate, integrate and improvise.

Can you describe the role of improvisation in movement?

Any profession, any specialty should arrive at improvisation in the top tier, the top level.

Whether you play the violin or you box, you're going to reach improvisation.

Improvisation above all is the human condition.

It's the human The human ability the highest form of living is improvisation you improvise basically life is improvisation You're born you die and in between you improvise a shitload of improvisation.

The thing is, people started to isolate concept and some people went the next level and integrated them.

They present themselves as improvisation, but actually they're cheating people.

It's just another integration, improvisation, open improvisation, real improvisation, as we call it.

It's also called the zone, it's also called the tunnel.

You just experience this beautiful thing to be empty, just to let things happen through you.

That's what you need to do with movement if you aspire for the highest things.

I like how a guy on Reddit described you as Ido Porto may not be the nicest guy in the world, but he's a great coach.

So that nicest guy part, I come from the wrestling world where the goal of a good coach and a good program is to basically make you quit, to break you.

There's 0 patience for people who don't want to put in the work, to work hard.

Do you find that tough love is the best approach to coaching people, whatever their level of ability?

I don't like the term tough love because it kind of assumes that its importance is itself.

It's like that's how, that's the best way.

But on the other hand, I don't think people are made of sugar.

And I really believe that we've lost a bit side of, you know, how resilient we are.

And another is people don't like the truth.

So when people describe me as tough love, it's not because I believe in tough love.

100% of the people who have had issues with me on a personal level or through coaching are people who couldn't accept criticism.

What I offered, you know, took it personally, weren't able to deal with it, etc.

I can't even, you know, in my head find 1 example of a person I've been working with who received the criticism, worked with it and still complained.

But it's always these complainers and who fucking cares?

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like when you go mainstream as we've went to a certain level, you have to deal with it because I'm not operating my elite unit, my special op unit anymore.

Now it's an army and I need to accept the fact that I'm going to meet a lot of slackers, a lot of fucking point dexters and all kinds of, you know, they don't want to work, they want to talk about it, they want to do this, They want to do that.

They don't want to hear the truth They don't want to accept criticism or hear how much they suck and I just don't do that So, you know, I'll have to accept the fact that from now from now and again, you know I'll have this issue and I'm sure it will continue.

Do you think there's a difference in this aspect, in attitudes in the United States, in Israel and other countries?

Yeah, there are many countries where I don't have this issue or very rarely.

We have a word in Hebrew, it actually comes from German I think or Yiddish, it says tachles, it's like down to it, you know, the heart of it.

Tachles people are people who are like no bullshit, you know, directly, tell me as it is.

And this tachless, it exists in certain cultures.

In other cultures, it's a lot of chit chat and walk around.

You know, I didn't know how to chit chat.

A few days ago 1 of my students told me, you know, I can't chit chat.

When I first came out of Israel, started to teach around, it was Russia, thank God.

And that was so similar to where I come from in many ways.

But then when I went to the US or Canada, I had a lot of issues with the chit chat, with politically correct and walking around the bush and don't give it to me too harshly, you know, cover it with a lot of sponges around it, soften the heat, and yeah, it's definitely different between various countries, and I need, nowadays I need filters, which are my top students who are helping me teach, and some of them are great filters and in certain countries they'll do much better than me.

What does perfect practice look like for you?

So do you believe in the value, maybe this applies more to specialized sports, but like I come from Russia actually and from the wrestling world where repetition, putting in 10, 50,000, 100,000 repetitions on a specific movement is how you achieve success.

Do you believe in the value of that repetition even for a generalist framework?

There have been those that corrected and said perfect repetition is the mother of skill.

Well those who usually say it are those who don't achieve heights.

So I'll be very frank again, I'll be very extremely honest.

A lot of people talk about perfect, perfect, perfect.

And when I practice and when I move, it's never on the perfect conditions.

It's never with the right optimal blood sugar level and under the specific, you know, height of I don't know what and riding the wave of super compensation in the perfect way.

And usually, when people try to adhere to that concept in a perfect way, they end up falling off the wagon on the other side don't be don't be stupid don't just really yourself into the wall and lose sight of everything.

The truth is somewhere in between, and it varies between people.

For me, after 17 years teaching, 18 years now teaching, moving, seeing people, the hardest workers are usually the elite performers.

Of course, some of them are carrying a certain talent or this or that, but it's always with very dedicated practice.

They have built up that work capacity through that dedicated practice, and they can then move that ability to other disciplines.

In the grappling world I'm not sure how much you're aware of it but Marcel Garcia is 1 of the greats and he believes boldly against the status quo I think that you should only train jiu-jitsu, his sport, jiu-jitsu and not do anything else.

But the majority of other athletes in the sport believe that you should do strength and conditioning programs around that.

So they at least move slightly towards the more generalist framework.

Do you think there's value for the generalist mindset for like an elite athlete or should they just focus on their sport?

Speciality can reach a plateau because of lack of general base of the pyramid in some cases, but it's not a very high level of generalism.

Nowadays you're practicing against specialists and they devote more and more time to this specialty when you're doing other stuff.

So it's a complex riddle, you know, and to each case his own.

When you reach the top of your field, like Marcelo Garcia did in BJJ, You stop being inspired by your own scene.

You can't gain inspiration, knowledge, and motivation from your own scene, because you are the leader.

And that's where it's really, really valuable to become a bit more generalized.

You mentioned in an interview related to that a very interesting point that many people in the US in particular focus on learning more than doing.

So focus too much on acquiring knowledge versus using that knowledge.

How do you approach learning new things versus putting more time into old things that you've already mastered?

It's not only a US thing or a North American thing.

It's generally all across the globe, although there are more practical people and less practical people, you know, and each country has his own orientation, habits, you know, characteristics.

You need to be, it's kind of being super intelligent and oriented towards the information, but then have this dumbed down practical mind.

It's like, okay, now I need to work, you know, and having a balance across that.

And that's probably, that probably means that, you know, a certain IQ, for example, will start to work against you in certain fields and vice versa.

So when you become too much, as the Chinese say, the man who lives inside his head, you start to have this issue.

You know, you have a thirst for information, great thirst, but information is toxic.

And then we drink, we drink, we do, we kill ourselves, we kill the process and the knowledge it turns against us.

And that's the problem of the age of misinformation that we live in.

It's not only that the knowledge is toxic even when it's good knowledge, now we also have bad knowledge, mostly bad knowledge, mostly shitty advice.

The combination is lethal and just people become paralyzed or just you know move from link to link to link with a you know glazy eyes and just never actually do anything.

Yes I know you advocate building a huge work capacity.

So how many hours a day do you think, this is also a debate for specialists, how many hours a day do you think is the most a person can train movement intelligently before it becomes not sustainable, before their mind becomes uninspired, maybe as you said.

There is a choreographer in Israel, very known choreographer called Dohad Naharim, he says when you wake up in the morning in bed between the sheets, you can practice movement.

And he's not talking about with your partner.

So even there you can practice, you know, breathing, moving.

But serious practice, you know, practice oriented, you know, repetition and success and building skill and moving from isolation to integration to improvisation.

In most disciplines, it's around 6 to 8 hours a day.

Some people go more and reach even the 10-hour mark, and I've done that for periods of time.

In the military, you go even further than that.

Other disciplines require less, and it's also a highly individual thing.

So let's say even within the sports of gymnastics, you have a woman like and who trains 8 hours a day and next to her in the same team, also winning gold medals at the same level more or less you have Shawn Johnson training 3 hours a day and she reached the top of her field only gold medal in the Olympics so how highly individual this is very rare to see this three-hour gold medal thing, but definitely it exists.

So, the question I have is, out of the various elements like mind, breathing, developing muscular strength or joints, which is the biggest challenge to master as a student of movement?

It depends on the person, depends on his orientation.

Some people never require any form of mental training, for example, or psychological training, especially in fields like sports and team sports.

They're winners, they're oriented, they're focused, you know.

And other people require help in that regard.

Some people have great difficulty developing mobility and just the nervous system is panicked, it holds on, it protects them too much.

Other people are hypermobile and have a difficulty creating tonus and strength, and that is a great challenge for them.

Other people are great, complex learners.

They can coordinate complex actions and learn movement very quickly, while others are highly limited.

So that process of learning, that journey is individual to everyone.

No, you can listen to your body until tomorrow.

But yeah, you're not hearing anything, you know?

You need to learn, you need to create a relationship with your body, and you need the help of, of teachers, that's there is only, you know, a lot of people say, you know, I'll do it myself, then you deny collective knowledge, the most powerful knowledge that mankind holds, you know, because we're the only animal that have collective knowledge.

We've been able to move knowledge across generations, and that's how we have reached space, build the internet, do all these crazy surgeries, and solve genetic issues, and et cetera.

And we have collected knowledge generations upon generations.

So listen to your body, that's nice to say.

Most people don't hear shit, it's completely silent.

And you need to start to decipher the signals that the body gives you and that goes through a practice and learning discipleship and exploring a lot of different stuff and it's a highly individual thing.

Nowadays We don't have so much anymore this mentor-student or teacher-disciple relationship, but I really believe in that.

I wouldn't be here without my mentors and my teachers, the shoulders of giants that lifted me up.

On that, do you think that training and learning movement for the majority of the time is a fundamentally solitary activity or do we gain from the presence of others?

So, when you think of movement when you're training, is most of your training, like the repetitions done alone or with others?

I've trained years, you know, alone and with my students.

And I spend large periods of time alone, just training alone.

But I also spend a lot of time being in a community.

Movement is the best reason for gathering around in a community.

You know people for example nowadays they go to CrossFit or they do yoga or whatever and then they have their yoga friends and they have the real friends.

That's bullshit you know your yoga friends can't be your real friends Because we've been gathering around movement since the age of time, creating communities around movement around hunting, gathering, dancing around the fire.

Nowadays, I can recommend move with your loved ones, move with the people around you.

You know, you join a BJJ club, it's a community.

You know, you go there, you meet, you move around.

You go to a CrossFit gym, it's a community.

You can move with your children, you can move with your dog in the park.

It's important to move together but it can also be done alone and some things are better done alone and some things are better done together.

How do you think movement changes from solo movement, that whole pattern of movement where you're moving alone versus the pattern of movement where there's 2 people either working together or against each other.

So together is like dancing, partner dancing, and against each other is like wrestling or jiu-jitsu.

Do you think the principles of movement are different for when it's 2 people versus 1 person?

First, I spend more time moving with others, against others in martial art, because I spend most of my life in martial arts, and less time exploring stuff alone.

But definitely there are some concepts that still exist, like the quality of movement, how you organize your body in space, not in relation to the partner only, but first a BJJ practitioner or a stand-up fighter, he needs to organize his body in relation to space first, and then in relation to the partner as well.

So some of the concepts exist in both, while others are very different.

And you can train alone all your life, when somebody else is in the equation, it's going to change the game completely.

A major reason why we are under the fight laboratory, we've departed in reality from a lot of traditional martial arts.

And the delusions of training alone and doing forms and repetitive movements alone, and then it's a shit storm.

And you can't apply anything and you don't have any live practice and now we see that definitely in the fight game.

The practices that stayed very real, stayed very dirty in a way but very real, they are the ones who are providing tools for the chaotic environment of a fight.

In terms of injury, how do you treat, recover, and work around injury?

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Ido Portal: Movement